Hey family!

How are things going this week? I hope things are going well for you all this week. First off, congratulations to Paul on completing his Master’s Degree. That is awesome that all of those loans are paid off by ASU. That is super awesome. I wish I had that done so I wouldn’t have to worry about school when I go home. So that was some good news to hear. I am glad that is all going well.

It is funny that Brett has hopped back so quickly into the dating life. I can’t believe it. I don’t know if I will be the same way at all. I think I will need time to adjust. haha. He probably will be engaged by the time I get home. I can see that… Congratulations to Amanda Johnson. Everyone is just getting married right and left. I think that is pretty funny. I won’t have any friends by the time I get home.

Sydney got a haircut? That is awesome. It is funny how she likes to do all the girly things that Nathan and Lacy don’t like to do. It is super funny. I am excited to see that video of her singing when I go home. I miss dinner like usual every Sunday. I can’t wait to hop back into the family for Sunday dinner. That is one of the things I miss the most.

I am glad that you and dad are on a diet. I need to eat healthier as well. All I have eaten my whole mission is junk. Just a bunch of chicken, rice and beans and tortillas. That has been my most popular meal in my mission. I am excited to have chicken crescent rolls, and Cafe Rio’s pork salad, and the Fast Sunday roast and potatoes meals again. Well keep going strong with the diet mom and dad!

This week was all right. A lot of good things happened but nobody came to church still. I am glad that you laughed at my confirmation experience. That tells you how good my Spanish is Nathan. I actually got up and bore my testimony in testimony meeting yesterday. I got nervous of course but once I got up there everything felt fine. I felt like I needed to go up and bare my testimony. In Latin wards, just about everybody is a convert so they all love missionaries. Especially when they bare their testimonies on Fast Sunday. I felt like I needed to go up because missionaries never go up and plus the ward needed some missionary work encouragement because all 5 companionships in the ward are struggling to teach people right now. So I got up and I told everyone who I was and where I was from and then right after that I told everybody that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is not my friend. I said that because that is the first thing that people ask me right after I tell them that I am from Arizona. So everyone thought that was funny. Then I talked about missionary work and how all of us can share the gospel. So I told them about Maria and her family’s conversion because of just sharing the gospel at work. I mentioned to everybody that all they need to say is one sentence about the Church and you have done a lot in missionary work. So that was the basis of my testimony at church. It was good for me to get the nerves and go up there. I was scared to do it but I felt good afterwards. But like I was saying we didn’t have anybody come to church.

So on Friday last week, President Baker came out and worked with Elder Ferrin and I. It was a good experience. Of course we got all nervous about it but I like it that President takes his time to go work with missionaries. We contacted people in the street with him. We contacted a few former investigators with him and we had a couple sit down lessons with him. It went well. The Spirit was there and I think President enjoyed coming out with us. It is funny to hear his Spanish too. He speaks it pretty well but he has a gringo accent. It is funny but its cool at the same time.

Well the main people that we are teaching right now are E and M, and a girl named I. E and M have a lot of strong influence from their family not to do anything right. They didn’t come to church yesterday because E had his birthday party the night before. But of course, they can’t come to church unless somebody in their family will take them. Usually it’s their grandma who is a member but she slacks off a little bit and doesn’t go. So it is kind of frustrating. We are planning on going over their tonight to chastise them and to teach them. They are doing ok other than not going to church. I is a part member that I think I talked about yesterday. She has the same problem with her family. They are less active and won’t go to church with her. So we need to chastise them as well. We want to go over today as well. So they are the main people we are working with right now.

Right now in the mission, we are focusing on making something called a mobile area book which helps us use our time more wisely. So in the mobile area book, we separated our area into 6 areas, and we wrote down all of the members, formers, and potential investigators that live in each area to help us out when our plans fall through. So yesterday, we tried to contact somebody but they weren’t home so we opened up our mobile area book and went to go contact a member that lived close by to the person that we wanted to contact. So we knocked on the door and it was this 22-year-old kid who had been baptized 4 or 5 years ago that was wanting to come back to church. The even better thing is that he got married 6 months ago and his wife is not a member. So we are going to begin teaching them. This mobile area book is really effective. It helped us out last night.

We also started using this referral sheet that helps us get referrals from members. An elder in the mission made it up. We translated it into Spanish and we used last night with 4 members and these 4 members ended up giving us 4 referrals. It worked out really well. It worked out so well that I want to use it for every member that we are visiting. Right now we need more solid investigators and the members are the better source to find more people.

So I don’t have much more to write but there was something crazy that happened on Saturday. We were by the 110 in my area and we were going to an appointment when all of a sudden on the right hand side of the road there was these four African American chicks chasing another African American chick. One of the four was wearing this leopard printed leotard thing. It looked weird but they chased down this girl and then grabbed her hair and started pulling her down to the ground. And they threw her down and they just starting punching and kicking the snot out of her on the side of the road. She almost was curb stomped. While this was happening we were sitting at a red stop light. When the light went green we just pulled to the side of the road to keep watching this. It was like 50 feet behind our car. So after they beat the snot out of her they left and the girl just got up and walked away smiling. We were in shock. After that beating we thought she would of just laid there but she got up and walked away like nothing happened. It was nuts! So that was my crazy adventure of the week.

Anyways, I love you family. Thanks for writing me. The church is true. Keep believing in it. I will write you next week.

Love,

Elder Kevin Jones